My Swedish entrepreneurial adventure

Warning! Unlike other startup stories, that you are used to read on the web, mine does not talk about me becoming the next Unicorn. It talks about me trying to find a magic shortcut to entrepreneurial success.

It is said that we learn better from our own mistakes. I cannot agree more. For more than twelve months, I immersed myself into a completely new world, and “mistake” was a daily activity.

It all started with an idea: “What if I could create a market place for all the sport activities, and become the next startup everybody talks about”. I will call it “Sportyholic”. First mistake, an idea born from a desire and not from a necessity.

However, an idea is not enough for success, so I started reading books and articles about world best startups, assisting to different conferences related to startups, learning the Swedish legislation, working with a consultant, searching for a business partners, meeting investors, working with a IT developer, working on different prototypes, etc. More I was learning, more difficult the task was. Strange no? Five months later, I realize that I am not going to make money out of this idea very soon.

Therefore, I put “Sportyholic” on standby and started working on a new idea: “A location-based augmented reality game for tourists”. This challenge required more proficiency in the design field, so here I was reading about digital design, mastering Photoshop and Illustrator and of course improving my google maps knowledge. It was fun learning all this, but in the end, I knew that I needed a good technical team who believed in this project for this idea to take shape. It was exactly what I did not found in Sweden.

Probably, these ideas were never meant to become successful, but they were certainly meant to teach me a lesson (or more). I am done playing the startup game for the moment, but I keep the entrepreneurial state of mind inside me.

In the meantime, together with my beloved girlfriend, we have took a decision. We are going to leave Sweden and start pursuing our dream: “To travel the world for at least one year, or until we had enough”. We leave in September!